Participating in telephone conversations can be challenging if not impossible for the hearing impaired. One service presently available for supporting participation of the hearing impaired in such telephone conversations is referred to as CAPTEL, commercially available from Ultratech, of Madison, Wis. Under such services, the audio portion of a second party participating in a telephone conversation with a first, hearing-impaired party is routed to an operator, for example, by way of a conference relay or voice communications bridge. Such services generally require that a second party initiating a telephone call to a first party contact the first party through a telephone number provided by an operator, rather than by the first party's own telephone number.
The call is directed to the operator by way of the telephone number provided. The operator re-voices the second party's audio for translation by a speech-to-text application. The resulting text, referred to as captioned audio, is routed from the operator to the first party for presentation on a special telephone device including a text display screen. Another application allows for similar display of captioned audio by way of a web application.